27 Nov 2014

From the grammatically inaccurate
term ‘Lives’ gets unleashed this narrative style of insinuations about Sri
Aurobindo – as if the Mystic led double lives, one imagined for him by himself
which his followers and the world began believing as well, while the other
‘human aspect’ to be exclusively discovered through this self-appointed and
ambidextrous style of writing pseudo history. Deshpande shows how each left
handed compliment accompanies a dismissive, negativist, suggestive insinuation
about Sri Aurobindo.

In
fact only when we read R.Y. Deshpande’s Atrocious
Biography, it gets clear how academia and intellectuals get honey trapped
by this irreverence towards a Spiritual Stalwart, forgetting the fact that the
gems they hurry to attest as scintillating insights are from someone who has no
academic grounding, no formal education in history writing and doesn’t even have a
post graduation, least of all a PhD in historiography or any mentionable
qualifications in any other discipline. If we are to go by R.Y. Deshpande, we
are hearing the "brilliant" (!) take of an American ‘taxi cab driver and a high
school dropout’ on one of twentieth century’s most profound Mystic, and a
Cambridge alumni who was proposed the Noble prize for Literature.

20 Nov 2014

The
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust pays each inmate of the Ashram a monthly allowance
for engaging domestic workers to help them in their daily chores. Recently the
minimum wages of domestic workers has been hiked up by the Government to around
Rs 150 rupees a day, which comes to around Rs 4500 a month. As the Ashram Trust
could not afford to pay the higher wages, it drastically reduced the number of
hours of domestic help for the inmates. For example, those inmates who had been
sanctioned eight hours of domestic help have now been re-sanctioned only four
hours to match their existing allowance. Those who had only four hours have now
got only two hours despite, in a few cases, their old age infirmities. But what
is really shocking is that the allowances of Jhumur Bhattacharya and Gauri
Pinto, two elderly highfalutin ladies of the Ashram, have not been touched at
all! Why? Because they enjoy the favour of the present administration and were
once upon a time in the early days of the Ashram School “very close to the
Mother”, which now seems to be the standard excuse for being thoroughly spoilt.

Guess
how much they receive as allowance for their domestic helpers – more than Rs
20.000/ each!

14 Nov 2014

These days some of the inmates of Sri Aurobindo
Ashram, Pondicherry, seem to be living in a fool’s paradise. They think of
themselves as sadhaks and sadhikas of Integral Yoga without even knowing what
it means. They are buried under the weight of their own ego without letting any
opening for the entry of Light. They boast with great pride that our Ashram is
a laboratory, the cradle of the new race and think that one fine morning we will get
transformed without any personal effort. Yes, no doubt, the Divine Mother with
Her infinite compassion has given us a golden chance to participate in this
great advent and be in the Ashram in the “Hour of God”. But have we ever
introspected to find out whether we are using or misusing this unprecedented
privilege?

9 Nov 2014

Pranab
Kumar Bhattacharya: I don’t trust this Peter
you know, if he goes out of the archives, then I will be happy. Then I know
all our boys will do good work.

He
did not give much importance to Sri Aurobindo [in his history of the Freedom Movement in India]. Only twice or
thrice he mentioned his name, and the way he is changing the writings of Sri
Aurobindo, even the line that could not be read, he has put. I saw afterwards,
the line that was not possible to read in Sri Aurobindo’s handwriting, he put
his own line. Have you seen that? noticed? It is there that I protested and I
don’t trust this man. You have asked a question as to whether I have antipathy
towards the foreigners. It is not so. I have many foreign friends. But I want
to meet them on the same footing. I don’t want to show my superiority nor would
I allow them to show their superiority. If they are arrogant and if they want
to show their superiority, I will act. That’s what I have done.

2 Nov 2014

Apropos the news about Shri Manoj Das and
the Seashore Chit Fund scam reported in this site on the 28th and 29th
of October 2014, I felt that by Divine Providence the Orissa Seashore Chit
Bounty got channelled back to the flood victims near the Seashore in Orissa.
Prompted by my inner voice, I went through the self assessment given by Shri
Manoj Das in his reply dated 17 September 2014 to the column titled The
Enemy Within in the journal Organiser (dt 21 Sep 2014).

What he wrote angrily there perhaps can be
utilised with minor modifications to reflect on the current theme about Sri
Manoj Das (MD in short).

While Shri MD in his rejoinder to the Organiser
has claimed to be living in Sri Aurobindo Ashram for a little over fifty years,
the tail piece in the site wellwishersofsriaurobindoashram which
republished the same rejoinder, mentions that he has been an inmate of Sri
Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry since 1973. It is not clear how 1973 to 2014
adds up to 50 years! But possibly Sri Aurobindo’s line in Savitri,“Which less than zero grew and more than one”
has been used in the computation.

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